HIMERA
Sicily.
A colony founded in 648 B.C.
on the N shore of the island (Ptol. 3.4.3) by the
Myletidai (perhaps Syracusan refugees, guests of the people of Zankle) by the Chalkidians of Zankle and of
Mylai, and by an ethnic group probably originating from
Euboia (
Thuc. 6.5.1;
Diod. 13.62.4;
Strab. 6.272). The
leaders were Euclid, Simon, and Sakon. The Ionic-Chalkidian culture of Himera, mixed with Doric elements, was
subverted in 476 B.C. by Theron of Akragas who, to
avenge his son Thrasideos, exterminated the Ionic inhabitants of the city and replaced them with Doric
colonists (Herod. 7.165ff;
Thuc. 7.58.2-3; Pind.
0l. 12;
Diod. 11.48.6-8 and 49.3-4). In 480 B.C. Himera was the
site of the famous battle between a league of Sicilian
Greeks and the Carthaginians who, having been utterly
defeated on that occasion (Herod. 7.165-67;
Diod. 11.20ff
and 13.62.1-4), returned to attack the Doric cities of
Sicily in 409 B.C. Himera was razed to the ground and
abandoned (
Diod. 11.49.4; 13.62.4-5; 13.79.7-8 and
114.1), and Graeco-Carthaginian political interests
to the West with the foundation of Thermai Himeraiai
(Thermae Himerenses: Cic.
Verr. 2.35.86).
In antiquity the city and its territory occupied a large
portion of the coastal plain to the W of the river Grande
(the N stretch of the ancient river Himera) and the two
adjacent hills which dominate the plain to the S (cf.
Thuc. 6.62.2 and 8.58.2; Herod. 7.165ff; Pind.
0l. 12.26-27). In 1929-30 a large Doric temple was excavated—
the so-called Temple of Victory, which had been erected
near the river, perhaps in commemoration of the victorious battle fought in 480 B.C. It is hexastyle peripteral
(55.9 x 22.4 m) with 14 columns on the sides, rising on
a four-stepped crepidoma, and having pronaos, naos, and
opisthodomos; small stairways cut into the anta walls
between naos and pronaos gave access to the roof; the
splendid sima with lion-head water spouts (of which 56
units have been recovered) deriving from two different
sculptural conceptions, was carved by several masters.
Uphill, on the Himera Plain, campaigns from 1963 to
1972 led to the identification of a sacred area with three
temples, an altar, and traces of the temenos wall, some
blocks of the ancient habitation quarters, three sections
of a necropolis, and some stretches of the archaic city
walls. The three temples are of pre-Doric type, without
peristasis. An archaic shrine (15.7 x 6 m), which has
yielded a rich votive deposit, was built in the decades
immediately after the foundation of the colony. A new
and more elaborate sacred building (30.7 x 10.6 m) incorporated within its structures the remains of the archaic
shrine, undoubtedly for religious reasons. The long life of
the new temple, from the middle of the 6th c. until 409
B.C., is attested by a very large number of terracotta reliefs (metopes, pediments, akroteria) and by numerous
and diverse elements of architectural terracotta decoration. The third temple (14.3 x 7.1 m) is toward the N border of the sacred area. The monumental altar (13.1 x 5.6
m) lies to the E on the axis of the main temple. The urban
system and the typology of the houses show that the city
was planned as a whole and at one time (early 5th c.
B.C.) on the Himera Plain, with full adherence to a single and strictly orthogonal system, to replace an older
and irregular archaic plan. The necropolis contains inhumations in terracotta sarcophagi with grave goods dating from the second half of the 5th c. B.C. The finds
from the early excavations are housed in the National
Museum of Palermo and in the Civic Museum of Termini Imerese; those of the recent campaigns will be
exhibited at Himera, in an antiquarium soon to be
erected.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. Mauceri, “Cenni sulla topografia
d'Imera e sugli avanzi del tempio di Buonfornello,”
MonAnt 18,2 (1908)
MPI; P. Marconi,
Himera (1931);
A. Adriani et al.,
Himera I, excavation campaigns 1963-65 (1 970)
MPI;
Quaderno Imerese, Studi e Materiali 1
(1972)
MPI.
N. BONACASA
